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It’s just ‘justice’ in ‘no deal Peel’

Re: ‘You are asking me to say I am a murderer. But that is a lie,’ Nov. 21

‘You are asking me to say I am a murderer. But that is a lie,’ Nov. 21

The only thing surprising about this story is that a Brampton judge finally found the courage to call the police and Crown on this behaviour and do the right thing.

In my experience as a criminal defence lawyer, there is nothing unusual about what happened in this case. Mr. Morgan is not the first victim of these tactics and he won’t be the last.

In a series of decisions commencing with R. v. Oickle in 2000, the Supreme Court of Canada has implicitly sanctioned the use of dubious interrogation tactics by police, including lying about evidence, the use of threats and the undermining of traditional Charter protections such as the right to counsel and the right to remain silent.

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Nowhere has this invitation from on high been more enthusiastically embraced than by the Peel Police homicide department and some of the Crown attorneys who prosecute their cases.

Potential witnesses are routinely threatened with arrest or actually arrested as a means of “encouraging” them to adopt the police view of the case. This coercion often continues right into the courtroom.

Those same witnesses are threatened with perjury should they deviate from the statements extorted by police officers. They are sometimes arrested as they leave the courtroom after testifying, in the presence of other witnesses waiting to give their evidence, because prosecutors were not satisfied with their testimony.

Defence lawyers have repeatedly fought against these abuses in Peel but have been shot down by judges more than willing to turn a blind eye in the name of getting the bad guys; until now.

Where was the judge in Mr. Morgan’s first trial? Will Judge Dawson’s ruling make a difference? Will the civil suit make a difference? No. This is just the way criminal “justice” is done in “no deal Peel” and people like Eric Morgan are simply acceptable collateral damage.

The courage of one jurist will likely not alter that attitude. It will take much more. A public inquiry or, at the very least, a big shift in attitude from the rest of the Peel bench.

David G. Bayliss, Toronto

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While shameful and appalling, the behaviour of Peel Regional Police in the case against Eric Morgan is hardly surprising. As the current G20 investigation is showing, police too often act with impunity.

The fact that they would ask Mr. Morgan to accept a one-day jail term if he pleaded guilty to manslaughter shows that they were more interested in keeping a good record of “solving” murders rather than the pursuit of justice.

If all goes as it usually does, the police will get off with little more than a slap on the wrist. Meanwhile, Eric Morgan’s life has been destroyed. I salute his courage, pray for his healing and wish him great success in his lawsuit.

Francine Dick, Toronto

The Eric Morgan case is the kind of horror story we expect to hear from a repressive dictatorship, and it’s obvious that some reaction should be in order. Peel police may be proud of their record of “solving” murders, but common decency demands that there should be some effort to convict the murderer, rather than the most convenient suspect.

For a start, justice demands a re-trial for everyone convicted of a serious crime that has been “solved” by Peel police in, say, the last 20 years. This may be expensive, but perhaps the cost should be charged to the Peel police force’s retirement fund.

Then we need to try every police officer found to have faked or created evidence, and of every crown attorney who has accepted evidence that he should have questioned. It would be appropriate to sentence policemen and crown attorneys found to have collaborated in false convictions to jail terms and other penalties equal to those imposed on their victims.

Canada is supposed to be ruled by law, not by the police, and the law should apply to policemen as it does to other citizens. If not, the whole concept of a “free country” is a farce.

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